A leader of the West Springfield trucking company involved in a 2019 crash that killed seven motorcyclists in New Hampshire pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges, marking the first criminal conviction in a case that exposed years of bureaucratic neglect at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Dunyadar Gasanov, 40, former vice president of the now-defunct company Westfield Transport, admitted to three counts of making false statements in US District Court in Springfield, according to the office of Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 21, prosecutors said. Gasanov’s lawyer declined to comment Tuesday.
Westfield Transport, which was run by Gasanov and his brother Dartanyan, 39, hired commercial driver Volodymyr Zhukovskyy on June 19, 2019. Two days later, a pickup truck and trailer driven by Zhukovskyy through Randolph, N.H., collided with a pack of motorcycles from the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, a charitable group of Marine veterans.
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The company closed soon after the crash. In 2021, a federal grand jury indicted the Gasanov brothers, accusing them of skirting federal safety rules for the trucking industry in pursuit of profits, as employees routinely drove longer than allowed under federal regulations and then lied about it.
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The case against Dartanyan Gasanov remains pending. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors allege he falsely claimed he wasn’t behind the wheel when he was in fact driving for Westfield Transport on three occasions between April 1, 2019, and June 20, 2019, court records show.
With his guilty plea, Dunyadar Gasanov admitted to lying to federal officials about Zhukovskyy and other aspects of his trucking business, according to a news release from Levy’s office. The news release referred to Zhukovskyy as a driver involved in the New Hampshire crash but didn’t identify him by name.
Gasanov told federal officials he met Zhukovskyy in June 2019, when in fact, they had known each other for years, Levy’s office said. Further, Gasanov was aware that Zhukovskyy had been charged in 2013 with operating under the influence of alcohol, prosecutors said.
Zhukovskyy, 28, was acquitted in 2022 of criminal charges linked to the crash following a trial in New Hampshire.
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At that trial, Zhukovskyy’s lawyers blamed the collision on the motorcyclist leading the pack, Albert “Woody” Mazza Jr., 59, of Lee, N.H., whose blood-alcohol level exceeded the legal driving limit of .08 at the time of the crash, according to court testimony. Mazza was killed.
The crash also killed Daniel Pereira, 58; Aaron Perry, 45; Desma Oakes, 42; Michael Ferazzi, 62; and Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, a married couple from Lakeville, Mass., who were 58.
Last month, an administrative judge in New Hampshire suspended Zhukovskyy’s driving privileges in that state for another two years.
The 2019 crash exposed years of lapses by officials in Massachusetts, who failed in the weeks before the collision to act on two warning notices from Connecticut to suspend Zhukovskyy’s commercial driver’s license.
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Connecticut officials notified their Massachusetts counterparts that Zhukovskyy’s license should be suspended after he refused to take a drug test on May 11, 2019. The refusal triggered an automatic license suspension. Officers in Windsor, Conn., asked him to submit to the test after they arrested him on a charge of operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Zhukovskyy has pleaded not guilty in the Connecticut case, which is pending.
Dunyadar Gasanov, who also goes by “Damien,” faces up to 15 years in prison, though prosecutors are expected to recommend a more lenient punishment under a plea agreement, court records show.
The plea agreement includes a warning to Gasanov, who was born in Uzbekistan, that his conviction could affect his immigration status if he is not a US citizen. The Globe inquired Tuesday about Gasanov’s immigration status with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which said it was looking into the request.
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As part of his guilty plea, Dunyadar Gasanov also admitted he instructed at least one Westfield Transport employee to falsify records to make it appear that the company was adhering to rules limiting how long drivers can drive commercial vehicles. He also admitted to making false statements to federal inspectors regarding the manipulation of recording devices that track how long truck drivers operate commercial vehicles.
An investigation into the New Hampshire crash by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency, revealed that Westfield Transport drivers tampered with the electronic logging devices that track their driving hours. The investigators reviewed 150 driving logs and found that 28 had been falsified, records show.
Laura Crimaldi can be reached at laura.crimaldi@globe.com. Follow her @lauracrimaldi.
